Page 152 of Toxic Wishes

I wrinkle my nose at her. “So dad’s brother isn’t my father?”

“No, he is, but no one believed me at the time. He was living with us, and we were trying to help him get on his feet and get clean. And that was the same weekend your dad was gone for work.” She trails off, and I’m trying to follow what she’s saying, but she’s not making much sense.

Then she blinks as if she’s snapping herself back to reality. “I mean Micheal. He was on a mission to become CEO of the company, which meant long hours and dedication.” She looks down at her hands before looking back up at me. “Matt had been living with us for almost three months. And he seemed to be doing better. Drug wise, anyway. He told us he was looking for a job, but who knows if that was true. And when I got home from the grocery store, I knew something was off the moment I walked in. He was acting fidgety and talking crazy the second he laid eyes on me. Then, when I tried to walk past him, he accused me of having a thing for him. I told him he imagined it and began to go about my business, and that’s when he grabbed me,” she sucks in a deep breath then closes her eyes, tight, as if she is taken right back in time, “He was a big guy, bigger than Micheal, and he didn’t stop. And at the time, your father and I were trying for another, so I wasn’t on birth control.” She lowered her head to her hands and constantly fidgeted with her manicured nails.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I just prayed and prayed that you were Micheeal’s and not Matt’s.” her voice broke, “I wished every day, prayed that no matter what happened that you were just…pretty, because maybe, just maybe then your father would learn to love you, at least tolerate you if you ended up being—Matt’s.” She sucks in a breath.

“The world is harsh enough as it is, and pretty girls always have it easier since people tend to give them special treatment. Especially when a man’s daughter isn’t their own.” She sniffles, and it’s like my feet couldn’t move. The more she talked, the more numb I felt. I stared at her, taking this all in. She spoke like I wasn’t even a part of her, like an alien created in outer space.

The demon child comments on the video posted on my Instagram make sense now. Those had to be family members. The only one who came to mind who would have said it was Naomi.

“Even though Matt and Micheal were brothers, they were nothing alike and looked nothing alike.”

“Micheal’s dad was American, and his mom was Spanish. Matt looked like his mom more.”

I knew I probably should get her a box of tissues, but all my emotions were running wild inside me, paralyzing every body part, making me feel like a zombie.

“When you were born, Micheal wanted me to take a DNA test, but I refused. I already had you, and at that point, I thought of you as my own, no matter what. But as you grew into your features, Micheal knew you weren’t his until we all eventually saw the same thing he did. And even though I told Micheal what happened before I ever gave birth to you, it took him a long time to believe me. He thought Matt and I had an affair, and by the time he finally believed me, there had been so many arguments, and then the cheating started.” She pauses, looking past me. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what to say. Dryness coated my throat, so I swallowed hard to coat it again.

“We tried to move past it, but the older you got, the angrier he got, and the harder it was for him because your hair got curly, and you just started looking more and more like…him. And your father didn’t know how to move past it all. To him, you were a reminder of what happened to me. To us.”

She finally meets my gaze. “And I thought by giving you life, I was doing a good thing, but things got so hard between your father and me that—-I started resenting you too. Resenting his brother, but since he ended up dying from heart failure, from all the years of abusing drugs and alcohol, he wasn’t there to hate, so it ended up being easier to act like you didn’t exist.”

A memory popped into my head, and when I asked Adalee about it a couple of weeks ago, she avoided my question, like she had no idea what I was talking about when I knew she did.

“Is that where the nightmares came from?” I narrowed my eyes on her. “The claustrophobia?”

Her eyes glazed over like she was far away now.

“Answer me,” I say through my teeth. I blinked, letting a single tear fall.

She slowly nods as she dips her chin. “Yes.”

“Dad.” I tugged on my curls angrily, Hoping that it would help me focus on this pain burning in my chest elsewhere. “I mean Micheal. He would lock me in a closet, wouldn’t he? When I couldn’t stop crying? I remember now. He would stick me in there, and Adalee would sometimes come to rescue me, but he-” Another tear fell down my face, and I sucked in a breath to help me breathe.

“He would punish her too for letting out a demon child. So he told her to leave me there until I stopped crying.”

Her face turned white as if she was going to throw up, but I didn’t care how she felt. Not anymore.

“And you,” I scoffed, curling my lip in disgust. “You just let him.”

“I’m sorry,” she says through a sob. “I’m so sorry, I d-”

“Didn’t what?” I interrupted her, “Want to lose your precious, perfect lifestyle? Your expensive car, getting to go shopping every day, racking up the credit cards while you sip on wine without a care in the world. Or are you sorry because you didn’t fight for your demon child? Is that how much you cared, mother?”

I didn’t give her time to answer; I just kept going, “Or is it that you felt like you gave me life,” I say in quotes, “so in your fucked up head, you thought, I birthed her that’s enough. No need to be a mom to her and take fucking care of her. I did her enough favors because I didn’t kill her in my womb.” My voice was louder now, and I felt my chest moving up and down.

“You know what,” I say with a weighted laugh, “If this were the life I knew I would have, I would have been better off dead. Because let me tell you, mother.” I step closer. “Living in that house, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn't feel dead already.”

I take another step closer, tilting my head to the side. “Why did you take me to the hospital? Was it because you didn’t want the town to know Mrs. Ashley Asher’s life wasn’t perfect? That her daughter had an eating disorder, and the only time that the parents noticed was when her heart nearly stopped beating, and she was skin and bones?” Silence filled the air, and I was inches away from his face. Rage mixed with gut-wrenching pain churned inside me as I glared at her.

“I tried,” she starts to say as her voice cracks. “I tried. I did. I tried to love you,” she repeats softly as tears roll down her cheeks.

I blink, and just like that, the mirror I have looked at in the past twenty-one years is shattered, and time has stopped, along with my breathing. My whole world came apart right before my eyes. That was the entire answer to everything. My mom tried to love me, but she couldn’t.

49

Abigail

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